I’m certainly not going to predict the demise of the Republican Party, because even the dessicated corpse of a once mighty party is still much more valuable that some no-name startup.
Look at how easily Trump was able to take over the Republican Party and remake it in his image. After the Republicans lose disastrously in 2018 and 2020 and for years afterward, somebody is going to take over the party and remake it into a party that can win elections again.
Yeah, yeah, it’s premature to discuss the utter failure of the Republicans when they currently control the House, Senate, Presidency, and a majority of Governorships. But the party is marginalizing itself at a furious pace. It’s going to have some spectacular electoral failures over the next couple years, and is going to have to figure out some way to rebuild itself. There are only so many racist old white guys out there, and they’re getting fewer and fewer every day.
That’s an interesting perspective, given all the recent hand-wringing over people doing essentially the same thing to some Florida high-schoolers recently.
Oh, you mean the Florida high-schoolers who were SHOT AT??? Is that what you’re referring to? Just asking.:rolleyes: I mean, perish forbid that these kids who saw some of their classmates die at the hands of a gun-wielding maniac should exercise their First Amendment rights…the horror, the horror…
That is not the same thing as students on a campus wanting a “safe space”, which has some controversial aspect to it, and it is something that could be discussed if both sides could calm down. The far left is upset that they don’t have it, and the far right is pissed that they want it. There are many social justice nuances that make sense in some perspectives, but are pushed as though a student’s personal desires for social contact and interactions should be national policy. That’s when they get a bit stupid, and we tell them to come back when they can handle rational discussions. They go off and vote for Jill Stein or something. Eventually, most of them will grow up and realize that they are actually just being overly sensitive about some things. Not saying all of their complaints are just being over sensitive, and also I don’t entirely blame students who have fought against discrimination their entire lives to be a bit more sensitive about it than those of us who really haven’t. But, they aren’t really ready to have a discussion about it yet. This doesn’t mean that we cannot see when certain things are actually negatively effecting student’s lives, and try to ameliorate them, and them bringing up their problems in their inartful ways does have value, just the solutions that they come up with may not be the best ones.
In Florida (and I suppose, all the recent walkouts and protests around the country), this is students wanting an actual safe place from being shot at. Now, are they actually ready to write a gun bill that will address and solve all their problems? No, probably not. Are they able to bring an issue to the attention of the greater population, and ask “the grownups” to come up with a solution? Absolutely.
Basically it comes down to that there are three different basic demographics. Those who identify problems, those who identify solutions, and those who are actually responsible for implementing them. I contend that the democrats have many fools in the first catagory, some fools in the second, but not that many in the third, while the republicans have displaced most of the people who used to be responsible for implementing solutions, and replaced them primarily with those who just point out the problems, but are unable to come up with, much less implement, workable solutions.
So teenagers across the country that are speaking out telling us adults that they are tired of being scared of being shot while at school are “the far left”? :rolleyes:
I’ve been watching these conservative attacks on the Parkland survivors and on school walk outs against gun violence and I gotta say you guys are committing one of the worst political self-owns I think I can remember. Pitting yourselves against kids who have survived mass gun violence and trying to de-legitimize their voices seems like very poor long term strategy. Also, when the hell has it ever worked in human history to tell teenagers to shut up and know their place? But please, by all means, proceed…
This is an actual response from a lady I know personally, a Trump supporter, definitely not a bot, she really thinks this way. She entered this in response to a post about the FIU bridge collapse:
Thanks again for another thoughful response. By “those who are actually responsible for implementing them” do you mean elected (and appointed) public officials? There are some of those with a D next to their name that I’d consider “fools” too, but I’m not terribly interested in quibbling with your “not that many” evaluation.
This part:
intrigues me though. Is this a problem you’ve noticed just since the last national election in 2016? Is it something you’re arguing goes back to 2010? 1994?
I think k9befriender can speak for him/herself, just like I speak for myself and you speak for yourself.
So you do consider the Parkland Survivors and teenage school walk out participants “the far left”? Is anyone you disagree with part of “the far left”? I’m not seeing where you consider the delineation to be? Can you define for us exactly what you consider “the far left”? What sorts of policy preferences do you think they hold? Seems to me you have a far too expansive view of that term.
You probably wouldn’t. We certainly have allowed some fools to make it to elected office, but I do feel that the republican side of the aisle celebrates it.
We can go back forever, if we want to find the root causes of divides between parties, but I would say the wake of the 2008 election is when it really started up. That was when the mainstream conservatives started getting primaried by tea partiers. The republican party has been dragged off the the far right ever since, and has not really done much to put on the breaks.
That would be a very poor understanding of what I said. I did say that we are not expecting them to write gun bills, but that is not remotely like "to tell teenagers to shut up and know their place ". I said we should listen to them, what their problems are, give them the benefit of the doubt enough to let them propose their solutions, and then work to fix the problems that they have identified.
One thing I have always stressed in all of my employees, (and followed when I was an employee), is to never bring up a problem to which you offer no solutions. Now, sometimes (many times) the solutions that are proposed by my employees make no sense. The solution presented does not need to be the one that gets used, it doesn’t even have to be a particularly good one, but it is useful that you have come up with one, because it means that you have a better understanding of the problem. Now, when I see the problem, I come up with a solution, and it may be related to the solution offered by my employee, it may not have anything to do with it, but in either case, I don’t chastise them for not knowing what they are talking about, and tell them that because their solution wasn’t a good one, their problem is not worth considering.
Do you consider the problems brought up by Bernie Sanders and his supporters, or Jill Stein voters to be worth considering? In other words, do you see those groups and the high school walkouts all in the same group of “those who identify problems” (or solutions, even though those solutions aren’t good)? Or do you see a difference between the two groups, where the former are dumb and shouldn’t be taken seriously, so we just smile and pat them on the head, and hope they grow up, while the latter are raising the profile of important issues and so they deserve to be taken seriously?
I didn’t think there was much substance there to reply to, but I’ll give answering your questions a go anyways:
Some of them, but I suspect it’s a small minority. I suspect that most of the school walk-outs were probably mostly interested in getting out of class for the day / hour / 17 minutes and took whatever excuse conveniently allowed that to happen.
Not everyone I disagree with is part of the far left. I have disagreements with fellow conservatives, with moderates, and plenty of other political persuasions.
That’s because, again, I didn’t use the phrase, and wasn’t trying to make such a delineation. “Who does HD think is ‘the far left’ and what does he think they believe” wasn’t the thread topic.
Probably not precisely. To the extent that it’s a classification, it’s one with fuzzy edges.
Weird ones that probably wouldn’t work well in the real world.
Why the hell did you bother with all of these questions if you’d already made up your mind about the outcome?
I think it’s a non-issue. Most Americans probably couldn’t tell you what “the Parkland Survivors”[SUP]TM[/SUP] means today. In a few months, almost nobody is going to remember them or care what they wanted.